The document outlines effective questioning techniques for validating product ideas, emphasizing the importance of avoiding vague and hypothetical responses. It suggests focusing on specific past experiences and emotional signals to garner valuable insights from potential users. Additionally, it highlights the need to prevent slipping into a pitch mode during conversations and encourages asking concise, targeted questions in informal settings.

1. THE MOM TESThow to ask good questions to test your product idea
April 2016
Based on the book by Rob Fitzpatrick

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Avoid bad data
■ Compliments
■ Fluff
– Generic claims (“I usually”, "I always", "I never")
– Future-tense promises (“I would”, "I will")
– Hypothetical maybes ("I might", "I could")
■ Ideas
■ When someone starts talking about what they “always” or “usually” or “never”
or “would” do, they are giving you generic and hypothetical fluff.

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Wrong questions
■ Do you ever…?
■ Would you ever…?
■ What do you usually…?
■ Do you think you…?
■ Might you…?
■ Could you see yourself…?
■ Instead: When is the last time…?

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Questions to dig into feature requests:
■ Why do you want that?
■ What would that let you do?
■ How are you coping without it?
■ How would that fit into your day?
■ Ask about the specific examples.

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Questions to dig into emotional signals:
■ Tell me more about that.
■ That seems to really bug you — I bet there’s a story here.
■ What makes it so awful?
■ Why haven’t you been able to fix this already?
■ You seem pretty excited about that — it’s a big deal?
■ Why so happy?
■ Go on.

6. STOP SEEKING
APPROVAL

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Pitch Symptoms:
■ Sometimes we accidentally slip into pitch mode:
– No no, I don’t think you get it…
– Yes, but it also does this!
■ The important thing is to recognize that we are pitching our solution instead of
listening to people’s problems and to try to recover from that.

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Look before you zoom
■ We can miss the important questions by spending time on ultimately unimportant details.
■ This can happen when we get stuck in the details before understanding the big picture.
■ Most people have lots of problems which they don’t actually care enough about to fix, but
which they’ll happily tell you the details of if you ask them.

9. ALWAYS PRE-PLAN THE 3 MOST
IMPORTANT THINGS YOU WANT
TO LEARN FROM ANY GIVEN TYPE
OF PERSON.

10. 5 – 10 MIN
(ANYTIME, ANYWHERE)
avoid being too formal; you don’t need to make appointments just
to ask these questions; ask people you meet at conferences,
meetups, or anywhere else.

11. EXAMPLES

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Questions for a PM Tool:
■ How big is the team you work in?
■ How do you communicate with your teammates?
■ How do you receive clients’ requests?
■ Which PM tool do you use? Are you paying for it? Which payment model do you use?
■ How did you find out about it?
■ What do you (mostly) use it for? Tell me about 2-3 tasks that you most frequently accomplish
using that tool?
■ What is the most valuable feature of that tool for you? Why?
■ What don’t you like about it? Is there something missing?
■ Have you tried another tool to accomplish the same tasks? What made you switch to the current
one?

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Questions for an Alarm Clock App:
■ How many alarms do you set in order to wake up in the morning? How many alarms have
you set up for tomorrow?
■ In which time interval do they ring?
■ How many times do you snooze before you get up?
■ How about this morning? When did you wake up? How many times did you snooze?
■ When is the last time you overslept and why?
■ How often did you wake up later than you should in the last year (or month)?
■ Do you use an alarm clock app on your phone? Which one? Why? What do you like about it?
■ What is the first thing that you do after you turn off your alarm and decide to get up? How
about this morning?